


This time, everybody dies

by radicalhufflepuff



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 13:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2193627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radicalhufflepuff/pseuds/radicalhufflepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Children of Earth make-it-worse fic. The Doctor comes to fight the 456.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This time, everybody dies

Jack wakes up, breathes in, and prepares to die. Breathe, die, wake up. Wake up, breathe, die. Die, wake up, breathe.

 

_It had been a brilliant plan. He had the Doctor's number, this wasn't, as far as he knew, a fixed point in space-time. The Doctor would know what to do_ _._

 

The Earth is desolate now, it has been for decades, maybe centuries by now. With no more weather, no more changing of seasons, it is impossible to tell.

 

_At the time, he couldn't have guessed. He hadn't known what they were capable of._

 

It hurts to wake up. The air stings his lungs, burns his skin, makes his eyes water. Worse, it is so _lonely_. There is no one to talk to, not even anyone to think of or hope for. Everyone he knows his dead.

 

_The TARDIS arrived in Thames House, and the Doctor had rushed up to the thirteenth floor. For once, Jack had been too preoccupied to hit on him._

 

He has searched the wreckage of the Hub a few dozen times over the years, looking for the Vortex Manipulator, for escape. But he hasn't bothered in at least nine years, probably longer. What would be the point? He doesn't have the strength anymore. He is so hungry, he wishes he could die of hunger, of thirst, of exposure. He longs for death.

 

_Ianto had been among the first to die. It had been sickening, undignified. The poison the 456 had released did not allow for a pretty death, it was a convulsive shake, bulging eyes, swollen tongue. Jack hoped Ianto hadn't tried to say he loved him, he didn't deserve that._

 

Eventually, he knows, he won't be able to breathe. With no more plants, the supply of oxygen will dwindle. With only one living being left to metabolize oxygen, it may take thousands, millions of years. But it will happen. Jack is going nowhere.

 

 _The worst was the Doctor. He hadn't been immune to the poison. He had died and regenerated_ , _then died and regenerated again until he was out of regenerations. The last Time Lord was gone_.

 

No, perhaps the worst is that this is Jack's fault. Why couldn't he have just given them the children? Why couldn't he have watched Ianto die of old age, watched Gwen and Rhys raise a child, flown with the Doctor in the TARDIS again? Known that there would be great and bountiful human empires?

 

_It wasn't just the Doctor, Ianto, even humanity. It was everything. Every living thing on the planet had died. The plants, the bacteria, the fungi, the TARDIS._

 

Jack wakes up, breathes in, and dies.


End file.
